The author has been working under the auspices of the Dzongkha Development Commission of the Royal Government of Bhutan toward the completion of grammars of several Bhutanese languages including their folktales and multi-lingual dictionaries of the languages.1)In addition, I am in the midst of conducting a project on accessing the pedagogical vocabulary in Standard Colloquial Dzongkha for foreign leaners with Royal Thimphu College. Initial results on lexical items, drawn from my fieldwork with native speakers, are presented in this paper.The vocabulary shows considerable lexical richness with a diversity of semantic domains that corresponds to what cognitive linguistics describes as a cognitive category, and it further reveals substantial etymological variation, obviously demonstrating the maxim “chaque mot a son histoire” （Jules Gilliéron）.